2003-02-12 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- An Alaska senator has inserted a number of initiatives into the massive federal spending bill that would increase logging on federal lands, not only in his home state but elsewhere in the United States.

The measures were introduced in recent days by Republican Sen. Ted Stevens at the request of the logging industry, which praised the effort as a last- ditch attempt to save the industry in southeastern Alaska and invigorate it elsewhere.

Environmentalists, however, complained that the move evaded the scrutiny of congressional debate and that the increased logging could damage some of the nation's most cherished forests.

The spending bill remained hung up Tuesday over the Senate's insistence on providing relief to drought-stricken farmers.

If the bill becomes unstuck, advocates on both sides say the logging provisions are likely to survive. Both the House and the Senate are eager to enact the overdue, nearly $400 billion spending bill.

The provisions were introduced during a conference committee reconciling the difference between House-passed and Senate-passed versions of the spending bill. In the closed-door meeting Monday, Democrats were unable to strip the forest provisions from the bill.

One measure would create a program to allow loggers to harvest prime trees in exchange for their help in managing the forests. Several others focus on the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska, the largest national forest and the one with the most undeveloped land.

The Tongass and Chugach national forests, both in Alaska, would be exempted from a nationwide policy banning road building in undeveloped areas of national forests. The Forest Service would have to offer enough timber sales from the Tongass to satisfy market demand. And the 1997 forest-management plan would be sheltered from legal challenges.

The moves are designed to provide a steady supply of old-growth trees from the Tongass. Most saw mills in southeastern Alaska already have shut, and production has plummeted in the past few years, said Owen Graham, executive director of the Alaska Forest Association.

If the provisions are not passed, "our industry is going to collapse completely," he said.

Tom Waldo, an attorney in Alaska for Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, countered that the provisions would bring "an onslaught of timber sales from roadless areas of Tongass, which are clearly contrary to what the American people said they wanted."